


Mortality as a challenge

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Destiny (Video Games), Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, I present: I wrote this for me, I'll add more characters as they appear since I'm a slow writer, and I'll edit the tags later too, au where Emily is the man with golden gun, brought to you by a hellish mix of hyperfixation and purple prose, corvo as their ghost, jessamine was a warlord
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:15:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21754624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which Emily finds worlds unknown
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Jessamine Kaldwin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	1. Follow the signs

The Lady Jessamine is kinder than most of her Risen brethren to the mortal masses in her territory.  
She hunts for them in exchange for labour in the early days. Fallen heads for security, or deer and boar and bear for filling their empty stomachs. Livestock and crops.

On the border of what will become the Plaguelands Jessamine raises a small citadel and builds herself a throne. She holds a court. She offers charity. She saves every life she can and abhors the war she makes so well. She’s not truly a warlord, and so she escapes that crusade’s wrath.  
The Iron Lords still come for her though and she stands her ground. Tells them she has an obligation as ruler not to leave her people alone, not for a shell of a city.

The most eccentric thing she’ll ever do happens about a decade before she dies.

Jessamine’s Ghost is a taciturn and grim little thing, more clever than her at dodging enemy fire. Which is helpful because he never hides away, always brushing against her jaw and whispering. Her settlement grows into more than a bitter set of short stone barricades hidden in the shadows. It becomes homey after the years, stable even. So stable as a fact that Jessamine disappears on missions now and then. Sometimes she would bring backs gifts of scavenged technology and knowledge, sometimes she’d send settlers or traders.

This particular time she leaves for a whole six months and when she returns it’s without the weapons or even the armour she left in but with a small girl held to her chest. She tells her council first and announces to all her people that this is her daughter.  
This is their princess, she’ll lead them one day Jessamine says. She’s got the child hoisted up on her hip so everyone can see her clear.  
Lady Jessamine is larger than life, statuesque in her new armour and she speaks like this has already come to pass before, like it’s a certainty.

She never confides what makes her so sure, never what makes her do this. She doesn’t speak of it not even to her ghost, and Corvo hasn’t talked to anyone other than her and now Emily in decades. No one but Corvo could even guess at why when the call of the Iron Lords rings down to their valley Jessamine takes only her best weapons and a rickety sparrow to join them. Not even her ghost.  
An interim commander is established, as Emily is just a child still.  
When news of City’s failure comes down he rules clumsily for two years until another Risen finds them.


	2. The key becomes the cage

She’s like the horrid mirror of Jessamine. Her name is Delilah and she hungers for old world glory. She takes the throne, plays mind games with an increasingly grim Emily.  
Something is off about Delilah, but she’s Risen. She’s got the Light and strange golden piecemeal armour held together with vines that shrugs off a cannon fire one day. Delilah rules with an ironwood fist and a fast hand-cannon over their small town. Thinks herself queen of the world. It is not a rebellion anyone would survive, not one worth risking for greed and bloodshed. She rules for three years. Three brutal cycles where petty slights leave splatters on the pavement and buildings are broken on reckless whims. Delilah imbues her Light into tokens of her favour. Those who carry it shed their empathy and take up idle torment.

Emily is still a child really. Barely a teenager, certainly not an adult. She’s been treated like a doll and given patronizing names by her new mother. She doesn’t talk anymore either, not to people but if anyone cared to listen or spy they’d find drafts of speeches and rough philosophy. Emily knows she’s nothing but a songbird in a cage but she’s sick of it. Jessamine never told her why she brought her here, and she doesn’t remember much that far back. Corvo wouldn’t say even if he knew. Emily is sick growing sicker of simply letting other people define her.

Delilah is holding another festival. She’ll be on a podium and her entire makeshift court- Emily included, will be behind her while she makes a speech about how beloved she is to the quivering masses. She doesn’t really plan, she just runs over what she knows while her hands move themselves. Picking out a long coat, a soft scarf and study boots.

Emily follows dizzy in the harsh morning grey light. It looks like it might rain like it always does here. She wishes she’d picked something more subtle than blue while her fingers wrap around the iron staff she stole from the forges and hid in the folds of her clothing.

She doesn’t have a plan but when Delilah says to be grateful for her hands, that which built their town and raised it from squalor, it wouldn’t matter because she’s overwhelmed with hate.  
She doesn’t scream. She draws the rod that will never be a sword and cracks it across the closest guard’s throat so hard the cartilage crunches like glass.  
Delilah is turning at the commotion and the crowd is stirring and Emily keeps moving.  
She feels something icy tug at her heart and drip down her wrist, like her cold rage is overfull and leaking out physically. Delilah is looking at her eye to eye when she sinks her makeshift weapon through her gut and where she thinks her spine should be. She jerks like a fish on a hook, dull eyed dying but not yet dead.  
Emily leaves her pinned to the stand like a butterfly on a board her stolen iron rod turned makeshift pin is glittering purple with light steaming off it. She can feel it draining out of her and has seen her mother’s own golden glow rise and fade long enough to know even if Delilah wasn’t coming back right now when this fluke wore off she would.

The witches scatter like cockroaches when she turns on them, too afraid of dying to measure the odds. Emily pulls the microphone off the podium by leaning over Delilah and her hands barely shake.

“I haven’t spoken to you often before but I’ve lived here my whole life; and your Lady Jessamine raised me as her own, so ask your to heed my words and listen to me my people. We can not stay in our small citadel any longer. It’s not safe here anymore.” Emily pauses for a breath, voice steady and trying to recall what her mother told her the night she left so long ago, “Humanity is gathering together again, there is a home to be found beneath the Traveler. If you will follow me I will take you there.”

The crowd murmurs assent and Emily doesn’t know the way to the traveler because it’s path she’s never taken before but Corvo has, he was born there. She sends a group of the elderly, the ones who can not walk easily, two who’s chairs are not suited for this long trek and the very young with him to a hidden jumpship meant for small cargo that can’t leave orbit. It won’t carry everyone and they need to leave before Delilah awakens but it’ll help a few and that’s worth it. The rest and the brave few who offered their spots to others set of. A scout who’s been deep into the wilds, who’s chair is a modified sparrow leads the pack swiftly and Emily guards the rear. They trek until the sun falls, rest and walk a little longer when the bright moon rises. The time blurs for Emily, she doesn't sleep. She doesn’t know exactly when her thread of light snaps but it took so much out of her it’s not until the fledgling walls are within sight that it begins to refill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the chapter titles are gonna be lines from the two destiny miracle of sound songs so, go listen to those! They're good!

**Author's Note:**

> The first bits will be prologue I think, I've never written a multichapter thing before so I'm trying it here


End file.
